


Pb

by alythymia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Pre-Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, Romance, gross amounts of poetry/science parallels, men trying to make sense of feelings, metaphors like whoa, semi-angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alythymia/pseuds/alythymia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock breaks it first (because he usually does, remember?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pb

“You have a date tonight.”

John’s just stepped out of the bathroom when Sherlock says it. He’s still in a bathrobe, still damp, with a towel slung over his right shoulder to dry his hair in a minute or two. He had wanted breakfast first—a peaceful one—but he won’t get that now. He shouldn’t have expected any differently.

John Watson has been up for all of fifteen minutes, and Sherlock has outlined his day in its entirety: nothing fancy, just a date (the only one this month), and, as is routine, John sighs.

“I’m not even dressed, Sherlock.”

Sherlock doesn’t seem bothered. 

John pads over to the fridge. He checks the shelves for eggs, but there aren’t any there. There should have been, since he bought a carton yesterday, but the shelf is empty, save for a slab of cheese and tweezers. John frowns.

The chickens were dead already, though—Sherlock couldn’t have done them much harm.

Toast it is.

The bread is still good for another two days without freezing, he remembers, which is a blessing, since John can’t be bothered to open the freezer himself. If he’s being honest, he’s afraid of what he might find in there—less afraid, actually, since fear implies the unknown. John knows what’s in there, absolutely (it’s worse than what you’re thinking, but yes, it involves thumbs), and he prefers the comfort that his non-visual conformation provides him to a prolonged expiry date. 

Other dates elude him, though. His, specifically, under Sherlock’s deductions.

John didn’t take long in the shower. He didn’t bother to shave today. Weren’t those the tells? They were the last time, and John had made the not-in-the-least-bit-embarrassing decision to avoid a shave because of it.  

“Books,” Sherlock motions to them casually, doesn’t even glance up from his own reading ( _Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique, 1787_ _). Ah. Right then._ John’s texts are piled neatly on the kitchen counter where he’d left them the night before next to a petri dish Sherlock has lain out that seems to be bubbling, might be smoking (is definitely smoking), that was not there before John had gone to bed.

“Joanna Maddox. She’s an English Professor, sessional,” John explains. He finally manages to dry his hair, then elaborates over the piece of still-hot toast. 

“She just moved here from the States; a bit of an Anglophile; likes the classic British poems. I thought I’d brush up on my Shakespeare…” Sherlock doesn’t answer. He’s sitting with his legs crossed, head dutifully heavy in his palm, bored, the ever-fixed mark of disinterest.

If Sherlock didn’t know that already, he doesn’t seem to care. Not that Sherlock would care: “This is a sonnet, Sherlock… Look at this volta, Sherlock… She has blonde hair, Sherlock… The sky is blue, Sherlock… I want to shag her, Sherlock...” But of course he knew that already—about that, about her already, too, all of it, right, like there’s a question. Probably knows her star sign (Virgo)—that she likes that sort of stuff. 

John sighs, and continues, walking into the living room. He avoids a smattering of books that Sherlock’s neglected on the floor, mostly textbooks, one children’s story.

“I’m researching, Sherlock. I thought you’d approve.”

“If it contributes to something,” he says, and flips the page. 

“Ahm, my love life?”

“You say ‘love’ as if this is the long term. It’s not.”

John frowns. “She’s a nice girl—well spoken, funny—”

“Emotionally invested in horoscopes.” See.

“I’m interested in her, Sherlock,” John slows. “Those books cost me sixty pounds.”

“Fifty-two,” Sherlock corrects, and it’s insufferable, even if John did leave out the bills. “And you should have gone to the library.” 

“ _I was investing,”_ he insists. 

“Unnecessarily.” Sherlock waves his hand again, fingers extended. It’s a flick, and John steadies the natural reaction to swat it down. “We could have used the money to replace the bulbs.”

“They’re not—” On cue, the lights flicker.

Never mind.  Of course. The Universe was always on Sherlock's side anyways. He'd probably helped its cousin out of a murder charge or something, and now the entire bloody cosmos is ever-so indebted to the Great Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, Protector of the Innocent, and Massive Sod.

But personification isn’t literal, not in this world. John’s been exposed to those poetry books for too long, and every so often bottle shard fragments seem to cut in; _to be or not to be, poor Yorrick_ , and the lot. The universe isn’t a person, he pushes. It’s a thing: a big wad of stuff and bits of black and bright that’s never made much sense to him. John Watson isn’t so inclined to poetry, not just yet, no matter how his bits might move him to be for the next twelve-hours (with the promise of a less-eloquently put “shag”). Glorious.

Still, he’ll admit, Sherlock’s timing is always impressive. And if John hadn’t learned by now, through the hard gut of experience, he’d say that it was a bit like magic.  Annoying dick magic. 

And if John Watson isn’t dazzled. Most of the time. Now, he just wants Sherlock to shut up. 

Sherlock isn’t so moved. 

“Your date will go well enough, I suspect. You’re taking her to Angelo’s, aren’t you?”

John puts the toast down on the (damp) coffee table. There goes breakfast. “Why should—”

“If you’re not, I’d suggest that you do. She’s a sentimentalist, so she’d like the atmosphere there: quaint, a personal relationship between you and the owner, with the plates full—so there’s a lack of pretention there, and I’m sure that’s the vibe you’d like to give off—” John opens his mouth to protest—“You’re John Watson, medical doctor, but not above the every day people that characterize this great city for what it is. _How thrilling,_ she’ll think. Because she fancies herself the sort of person that likes a good man. Your being in the army will thrill her, however, so I would bring it up, since you haven’t as of yet. She secretly wants a bad boy, but if she can excuse it with a good moral cover.”

It’s definitely one of _those_ mornings. 

“Good bloody—Sherlock, can you stop? It’s barely ten. My head hurts. Is any of this really necessary?”

He wouldn’t be like this if he wasn’t off the smokes. John doesn’t say this, but he knows. Unfortunately for Sherlock, his patience has already worn thin, so John can’t manage to care. John’s hands have gripped into claps around the chair opposite him—John’s chair, they’ve started calling it in their domesticity.

“You don’t want me to tell you how the date’s going to go then?” It’d be impossible not to call what Sherlock’s doing _preening_.  

“Nope.”

“Too bad.”

Sherlock goes on to explain in excruciating detail the full extent of John’s date: what she’ll order (stew, and steal whatever’s on John’s plate—she hopes for fries, apparently, another carb—“impossible to tell”), and about how she’ll wear a skirt and a deep-coloured blouse, one button popped at the top; she doesn’t have too much of a chest anyways, so it’s hardly a scandal. She’ll laugh too hard at his jokes (“but all women do that, so predictably; don’t make the mistake of being flattered”); but don’t bring up her father, because there are issues there (“isn’t that always the case with the women you choose, John?”). Apparently, she has a personal astrologist. Apparently, she’s beneath John (“But isn’t that what you want?” Sherlock smirks). Apparently.

John, for his part, manages not to pry his hands from the upholstery and punch Sherlock in the face, so he’d say it’s a success for the both of them.  

Sherlock presses on, two minutes now. “She’ll want to come upstairs, but she won’t ask you outright. She’ll most likely shift her feet, bite her lip—it’s a textbook case of the willing mate.” Sherlock pauses to stretch. “You’re welcome to take advantage of it, I suspect you will want to, but I’m not leaving the flat tonight. I have too much work to do.”

The mediocre toast was not worth this exchange. It isn’t because he’s angry either—John can deal with angry, he tends to like angry (it’s simple, natural enough). No. It’s that… John feels… violated. Not for his on sake, but Joanne’s. When Sherlock strips people down like that it feels a bit like—although he hesitates on the word, language is tricky like that—like a rape of sorts. It’s brutal enough for it, primitive, _selfish_ (that’s the word). The whole affair is unholy. Joanna’s been scraped to the bones and the skin and the other unsightly marks between the two, in the muscle maybe, where she twisted her shoulder when she was young (Sherlock would be able to tell him). It’s the anatomy that she learned in middle school but never grew up to understand. But John has, was educated for it, can identify fibers and its tissues. So he can tell that it’s cruel. 

“What’s the point to this, Sherlock?”

Sherlock breaks first, because he usually does. 

“What can you tell me about poetry?” he snaps. “Facts. I see you opening your mouth, John, close it. Don’t try to be clever and mention its syntax or beats or measures, that’s all form. What matters in it? Science is about the method, yes, but my experiments do have a purpose: there is a result that is achieved from them, and knowledge from said conclusion, and so goes the learning process.” He’s barreling forward into a shade quite like mania: it’s ghastly on flesh, isn’t his colour, too bright neon.  

“Tell me, what is the outcome of poetry beyond sentiment? Individual and inconclusive—inapplicable to a greater subject; you can’t learn anything definitively about a group of people, only that some of them felt _happy, or sad, or quite like dancing_ ,” Sherlock seethes as much as the man can. He slams his book together, like John won’t pick up on his tumorous emotional cues without it.“What proof can you provide me with about this so-called _human experience_ or the ridiculous notion of the _soul,_ which should have been abandoned a long time away, no logic to it…” But he’s trailed off now, arms no longer flailing about, independent, revolutionary. They didn't quite belong to his body, never have, like the rest of him. Sherlock’s gone back to the book. There’s some phrases in French that John can’t make out.

He doesn’t care to read them. John has enough knowledge to recall for tonight, squirting out his ears, poetry still bleeding into him, muddling his thoughts: somehow-called-facts about Romantic poets (because that’s her field), and other details about starlight.  

Those poets died young. John names them, will repeat the list with Joanne over lamb stew in the evening: Byron, Shelley, Keats... Shelley drowned at sea. Keats was diagnosed with tuberculosis at age twenty-five. John is a doctor. He knows the body, knows the lungs, and can say it’s much the same as drowning, tuberculosis. He tells Joanne that later, too. Because that’s beautiful, right? To some people? (An irrelevant connection, Sherlock would say, make some mention about the consistency of water and mucus and the differences in force between them on the ribs and when a man is submerged). It’s morbid, but still beautiful—maybe all the more for it.

Sherlock should understand this much, might even share in that human experience, images of his pale finger pads brushing over the purpled skin of a severed thumb. Or maybe not.

John doesn’t care much, anyways. He’s not a sentimentalist, for all of Sherlock’s accusations (as if watching _It’s A Wonderful Life_ at Christmastime was such a sin; if it was, maybe Sherlock would have encouraged it). Sherlock doesn’t need to appreciate poetry. Because John doesn’t either. Not really. He’s practical, and principled, and practically _insane._

“Brilliant.” 

“Don’t wear the red shirt,” Sherlock finishes. “It makes you look pink.”

“Fine,” John hisses. “And I’ll leave you to all that _work_ you have to do, shall I?”

John doesn’t leave his room until four hours later, when it’s three hours to his date, and John can kill the time picking out flowers, somehow, maybe.

He buys roses in the end. It takes him twelve minutes to decide.   

 

+ 

 

The date goes exactly as Sherlock said it would.

John picks her up at seven, and she’s wearing a purple blouse (which is, John notes, not as tight as the majority of Sherlock’s wardrobe, and he isn’t sure what to make of that). He, personally, wore the red shirt. Sherlock had been right: it does make him look pink. But she’d complimented him, and he her, and then they’d strolled down and past Angelo’s where she’d insisted, yes insisted, they go in—it was so “cozy”. “Quaint?” “Yes!” she’d agreed, mouth slopped up in a messy smile.

They talk about her job at the library, and moving from the States—she hesitates when John brings up family, so he drops it, says he has a hard time with that lot, too, that’s why he enlisted. Joanna’s eyes light up instantly. She asks John if he still has the uniform. Yes, he does. She does little to mask her enthusiasm as she grabs some vegetables off his plate.

Now, they’re walking in the direction of their respective homes, and John can’t help but wish it were over. It isn’t her fault, exactly. It can’t be helped: only that a movie is never quite as good when you know its plot; it might not even be a film he cares to see.

“The night is always so beautiful, isn’t it?”

 _(Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it_ ).

“It is,” John agrees. But he isn’t paying attention. John’s debating whether or not the turkey had been the right choice for a meal, with the serotonin, dangerous little chemicals. He stifles a yawn.  

“I’ve always loved the nighttime,” Joanna says, oblivious, “because it makes poetry feel more powerful.” She’s skipping over the cracks in the pavement as they make their way back to the flat. They’d agreed in advance that she should be the one to drop him off after their date, because she lives close enough to it, and she doesn’t need him walking back if they’re going by it. “Can’t a woman be chivalrous, too, every once and a while?” she’d prompted. (It wasn’t the correct use of the word, but John hadn’t said otherwise).

“Oh?” John responds. He’s paying attention now. Bits of Joanna’s hair are flying out of her bun, and a part of him wants to reach out and tuck them back in. 

“I’ve always thought so,” she chirps. “Yeah, the daytime is always concrete and simple, too clear about what’s happening… At night, though, with images and... yeah. When you can’t see things, those things and those feelings feel more… necessary, somehow. Language makes less sense, too. It’s sort of fragmented, but still whole. Makes more sense in the end, captures more of what’s going on. It’s still good. Better, I think.” Joanna is blushing.

John blinks. Despite her problems with articulation, that was actually… lovely. He’s about to tell her as much when Joanna cuts him off:

“I told Mrs. Constella that, too—my astrologist.”

She’s adorable, but it doesn’t seem right; she doesn’t seem right, in the head, maybe (but no, that’s cruel; there’s nothing wrong with her). Only, John finds he values facts over the aesthetics.

They’ve rounded the corner to 221b. John stuffs his hands into his pockets, anticipating.  

“So you’ve delivered me safely, have you?” he grins. 

“No obvious scratches or deformities that I can see.”

“The package arrived completely unscathed! I’m certainly thankful for it, for obvious reasons.”

Oops.

“Um…” Joanna is shifting her feet, biting away what remains of her bubblegum lipstick, with her hands clasped in a makeshift prayer behind her back. Sherlock had her nailed (John supposes he’s to follow suit). 

John knows what comes next—what he’d been hoping for anyways, had been this morning (wound tight with it, uncomfortably so, still might have lingering traces of that hazed out _want_ ). But instead, and maybe it’s because John refuses to play along with prophecy, make Sherlock wrong about how his night is supposed to end, or maybe it’s because he lied about liking the stew, or Wordsworth, or about being busy tomorrow… It doesn’t matter. None of it matters… Instead, John kisses her quickly on the cheek, and tries not to linger when the skin’s baby soft.

“My roommate has been having a rough night, so I promised him we’d watch some tele once I got home.“ He smiles. “I’ll call you though. Maybe tomorrow, yeah?” 

“Okay,” Joanna splutters, but she seems satisfied. “You don’t have to call, either. You know where I live… Um, you can come over anytime. Sleep well.”

“To sleep perchance to dream?” John tries. 

“Right!”

Joanna laughs. It’s a lovely laugh. Her voice could have made other sounds, too, John thinks: more guttural, feral—maybe high, or low (he suspects lower); he would have found out, dug the secret out of her, perhaps with his tongue. 

John’s regretting their goodbye already. Once she’s turned the corner and he’s finished waving, John stomps his way upstairs.

“I hope you’re happy!”

 _“Unlikely,”_ he anticipates, without response. 

Sherlock isn’t in the flat. John checks to make sure: upstairs and down, even with Mrs. Hudson, but he declines the cup of tea.

Great, John thinks. _Fine._ John wasn’t up for a row anyways. He’ll finally have an evening alone, and he’ll spend it peacefully on the sofa with a beer from the fridge, and won’t worry one bit about what Sherlock has gotten himself caught up in in the meantime, nope. That’s what John tells himself, even after he’s spent an hour searching the flat for drug spots or hiding spaces, or maybe a needle, even though Sherlock wouldn’t be that careless.

But he’s destructive, just like the best of them: poets, scientists, it really doesn’t matter. Sherlock’s just a man—a great one, Lestrade’s told him before, and one day, if they’re very lucky, he might even be a good one.

John isn’t sure he believes that. Maybe he should. The Romantics: unexpected, revolutionary—pushed past the humanist values of the 17th Century to believe in the goodness of the human spirit, and the necessity of nature, and the bond between the two. Whereas man was previously thought of as evil, fighting against his temptations but never progressing beyond them, the 18th Century Romantics said that man could overcome this; not only that, he could attain purity. One was born good and wholesome, ideal—children then were the pinnacle of that goodness, and admired for it. You came back to this goodness through nature, in the things of nature, in the woods, and the streams, and the appreciation of some flower or another (a rose, a daisy—but that doesn’t sound so poetic at all—tiger lily? Too exotic for the time). But those are too feminine things. For a man, he should pursue sublimity: mountains and thunderstorms, and maybe oceans, if they’re dark enough or deep enough, or large enough to swell. (They usually are). 

Does Sherlock know any of this? Would he care?

Someone might have called his eyes sublime, back then, if they were so moved. The woman would have to be free enough to do so. The man only mad. He’d pen down something prevalent like “glass“ or “liquid” or “quick silver”, know of the element or desire the wealth.

The descriptions would be wrong, though. Sherlock’s eyes aren’t silver. Sometimes they are, but they’re mostly blue, then green, then drug money, then nickel scratches on lottery cards, or too sharp lamplights—they’re more like electricity: a fine balance between its opposites, meaning wild, controlled, but ever-so-bright, and dangerous should you get too close, prey, twitch, touch.

There’s blue. There’s smoke. But someone has to die. 

Those poets wouldn’t have done him justice. It isn’t their fault; they’re a few hundred years off the mark. John doesn’t have that excuse.

John goes to bed angry, sexually frustrated, and worried, and that’s supposed to be the end of it.

He wakes involuntarily when there’s a crash from the hallway outside. By the time John’s opened his eyes, Sherlock’s standing in his room, back facing the open doorway.

“God, Sherlock, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning,” he groans. “Where have you been all night? What are you doing?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer the first question, but he answers the second.

“You can see exactly what I’m doing, John,” he says. “Your eyes will have adjusted to the darkness by now. I’m crawling into bed with you.” The bed shifts under the new weight. Sherlock’s knees press into the mattress, and John nearly caves into him. He has to reach out both of his hands to steady the fall. 

“No,” Sherlock continues. “I’m not crawling, that’s the expression. Language. No. I’m sleeping with you. Will be soon enough, if you stop talking long enough to let me.”

“ _You’re—_ “—bloody—“ _Sherlock,_ define _sleeping._ “

“The noun, not the act,” he clips. “Don’t be so predictable.” 

But John’s still in a partial state of paralysis. He moves his fingers, just to make sure he can. An index creases. He’s awake. Good—no, but _God_. 

“I—people will still… Sherlock?” Sherlock has managed to spread himself over the bed, no pillow, but he’s stretched over the covers and has his arm bunched beneath him as a substitute. He’s solidified in that way, barely moving, barely breathing. Were it not for the heat of him, even through the blankets, John might not have known he was there. Instead, the man’s a furnace. 

_The fuc—_

“Sherlock… you can’t just…” He isn’t responding. 

“You—” 

Silence. Sherlock continues to lie there, a subtle but ever constant burning through the down. 

John is left speechless. 

John should be angry—he’s supposed to be angry, he _is_ angry (get angry!)—because that’s what normal people _do_ when their mates barge in like this, just after a fight, in their room, for Christ’s sake, then expect you to deal with them and let them sleep with… After… No, people don’t get angry; they would, but they don’t, because this sort of stuff doesn’t just _happen_. And it certainly doesn’t happen with Sherlock Holmes.

Except, that’s the point, isn’t it? John blinks, slowly reaches a hand out to touch him, stops himself. He doesn’t, somehow.

This doesn’t happen with Sherlock Holmes.

Because it’s too… emotional. It’s… John pauses again, decides on the word: intimate. He can only stare. 

Sherlock’s still in his suit, somehow cleanly pressed, but that’s a possible illusion. That might be the darkness, and the fine line of shadows over the blackness of the material that preserve it; they sweep Sherlock’s hair, too, blurred into the shape of him now, more black, all black and fuzzy too-drunk lines, but still apparent against the white of his skin where its exposed (John lists the places involuntarily: nape of the neck, wrists, thin strip of bone crested over the back of his pants). 

 _Sublime,_ but the thought’s transparent. It’s without volume, and it does not float.  

Bugger all. 

“You’re upset.” John shifts towards him. Sherlock’s still. “Have you been drinking?”

“I don’t drink my feelings, John, like _ordinary people_ ,” he snips. “I’ve been thinking.” And he sounds almost… disappointed.

“But you’re always thinking.” 

“Yes, and that’s the problem.” A hiss; there’s some sort of snake between them that’s coiled itself between the rib bones in Sherlock’s chest when John wasn’t paying attention, snapped around the lumbar vertebrae—perhaps a viper of some sort, but it’s scaled and disturbed, leaking up pink nerves into the brain. John isn’t equipped for an operation of this nature. There’s no disinfectant, for one. And he wouldn’t know what tools to use on such delicate tissue—hands too primitive. 

Sherlock sighs, releases it himself. 

“I can’t stop,” he says. “I’ve spent the entire day thinking about how to stop thinking, which is as redundant as it sounds, and as equally frustrating as it was boring—since I’ve known the entire time how to get it to stop, of course I have. It’s only that the option doesn’t appeal to me in particular, so I’ve put it off.  But there’s only one solution to the thing, which I might as well get to, if not tonight, it will be tomorrow. And since I’m not a particularly patient man, I’ve decided to indulge.”

“Ordinary people indulge,” John says. 

“No, they don’t. _Oh_ , they think they do, but they don’t: they just never abstain.” Sherlock’s moving now. “They live their lives in these constant lines moving forward and upwards, and their indulgences manifest themselves when the line dips down, as they try to restore balance. Humans work out of habit; they return to it. This isn’t habit. I’m diverging from the norm. But it’s a completely rational slip.” 

“Says the man climbing into his flatmate’s bed at four in the morning with his shoes still tied,” John quips. 

Sherlock laughs.

John does the same, despite himself. It’s absurd; everything about this is absolutely absurd. 

So he tries to ignore it: tries to ignore the fact that there’s a grown man (Sherlock) in his bed, very much clothed, still in his shoes, and while he isn’t touching him there’s a scent so strong (some chemical John can’t place, or tea—but he knows tea, he’s British—Darjeeling?—or maybe a burning, not a smell at all) so inherently Sherlock, that he might as well have punched him in the face.

Perhaps Sherlock should have. Then John could account for the red of his face, mark it down as blood in the records, and Sherlock could examine it, touch the sleep-swollen skin beneath his left eye and tell him, “O” then “negative” before crushing away from him and falling asleep.

But Sherlock doesn't do this, any of it. Instead, he says, “yes”, and he can’t be answering the fantasy, because John is “O+” not negative, never negative, and Sherlock would know; John is too common for negatives, down to that cellular level; it’s a biology. John doesn’t know why he lied about it before, if only to himself. Exposed, he coils deeper into the blankets, mouth shimmied closer to Sherlock’s shoulder blades. 

“That’s the solution, then? Sleeping here?” 

“No.”

They’re both silent for a while. Like in most stories, there’s the sound of rain on the windowpane. Except it isn’t raining, so there’s a fan broken somewhere, or a rat, or perhaps perfectly timed drunkards clinking bottles outside—musicians, ones rare enough that they can still count the measures while taking a piss. 

Sherlock breaks it first (because he usually does, remember?). “Go ahead, ask it then.”

There's no use in disobeying him.

“What is this about, Sherlock?” John asks.

Instead of an answer, he gets, “Wrong question,” and Sherlock turns into him, physically rolls himself over so that his right arm and leg are folded over John’s body. The limbs remain limp, don’t tighten around him, but there’s a pressure there from Sherlock’s bones and the angles of him—seemingly impossible angles—so sharp, a perfect ninety degrees made with the inseam of Sherlock’s thigh, that John is weighed down by it. It’s mathematics. He’s knowledge—skeletal. And Sherlock is so large, so impossibly large, that he shouldn't be able to do it, but he manages to tuck his face into John's shoulder as well, breathes there. His stomach pumps into John’s hipbone.

“Go ahead,” he says. “I won’t bite.” The voice rumbles. But—oh God (he’s back in Afghanistan; it’s hot there, too)—John shivers at the prospect. He can feel it, the shiver, not the hypothetical bite, (unfortunately). It starts at his neck, where the skin is damp and beaded from Sherlock’s mouth; it trembles down from there to his toes and curls them up tight like wires, fat wires, not telephone wires, not meant for communication.

John waits until the tremor stops before he can speak again. His throat is dry, isn’t meant for communication either. Made for other things then—doesn’t tempt that thought. He’s too tired for—

“What is _this_ , then?”

“A temporary solution, a bit stronger than the seven-percent.” Sherlock traces his lips up to John’s temple, maps himself there. “You’re lead, John,” he tells him, murmurs it wetly into John’s forehead.

“Astray?” he squeaks. _Oh God_ (Afganistan again). But no, that’s not right. 

“Easily?” More likely. But Sherlock is silent, and it isn’t that either. 

Finally, Sherlock answers him: 

“Elementary,” he says. 

_What?_

It isn’t simple at all. 

“But—”

“Textbook,” Sherlock responds. 

It takes him a minute. John isn’t a chemist. _Elementary,_ he said. How is John expected to translate a science? Where would he start (hypothesis: If I’m lead, then… But…)? Because, I... No, that's wrong: therefore, I... Inconclusive. 

How many electrons does the element have? What’s its melting point? When is it liquid? When does it boil? It’s a stable element (John can be that). It’s malleable, he thinks (John isn’t, doesn’t bend; can’t twist like his second girlfriend from boarding school, tightly wound into eights and other infinity shapes). It turns blue when exposed to the air. Lead is used in building…

It’s poisonous, too, he thinks

— _lead poisoning, John._

The thought’s crisp. It crinkles uncomfortably inside his skull; John battles against it before he can accept it, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s right, and he doesn’t want it (hasn’t always wanted the right things; _I was a soldier; I killed people! I had bad days!_ ), but it doesn’t matter because it’s there now and it won’t stop, won’t reverse, regress, regret, and—

Lead poisoning: you die.  

John isn’t a chemist; he’s a doctor. His mind, however tired, reliable and textbook, works according to its function, its routine. It is not intelligence, not in the _mad_ sense. He isn’t Sherlock. So John recites it:

Lead, in high levels of exposure (usually through the process of ingestion or inhalation, dermal contact a less common case) damages the nervous system and can cause brain disorders. It’s widely believed to have adverse affects on the cardiovascular system, as well as the kidneys, and the immune system. High levels of lead in pregnant women lead to miscarriages (those bloody lumps like clay plop out between the legs—John wishes this were anecdotal evidence). It can accumulate as a toxin in soft tissues and bone as well (now John forgets the word; it starts with an ‘n’, ‘ne’. He’s so tired)… 

John is lead. Beside him, over him, Sherlock isn’t moving again. John isn’t either. He can’t, his chest is too tight, as though his rib cage might burst apart, shatter them both in brittle fragments of too hard muscle and spinal tissue (even if it’s a medically impossible theory), and take the lungs with them, pop them, latex, like a balloon—no other organs, though. John is empty.  He’s been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop. And if he gives over to breathing, then he’ll have to speak, have to answer him. Yes, he thinks. _Sherlock,_ I understand. 

Lead. Poison. _You’re lead, John. Poison, John, John,_ lips over skin. John is killing him. He’s killing Sherlock Holmes. And besides that, _more_ than that, more than killing him, he wants to kiss him, too.

“Give me a word,” Sherlock breathes. 

“Impossible.”

“It’s not.”

“No, you are. Incredible.”

“Alliteration,” he mumbles.  

“Sherlock.”

“Mmmm?“

“My Sherlock.”

“Those are two words.”

John turns his head then, so that his jaw’s against the strong pale swell of Sherlock’s neck. John kisses him there, just beneath the Adam’s lump. It’s hollow and rigid against the slack of his mouth. Sherlock swallows. A thick sound. And John is terrified.   

“This isn’t indulging,” Sherlock rasps. “I’m gorging myself now.”

 _Yes, Yes, Yes,_ John thinks. But also, _Yes._

“Gorging isn’t advised. I’ll get sick, fat; it’s too much.” The words don’t make much sense, but whatever Sherlock’s attempts at reason are being smothered by John’s mouth, which has gone back to its tentative work on his neck, down at the jugular.  

“So you’ve decided then?” John asks the vein. 

“Don’t I always? I’m the head between the two of us.”

“Well, if you insist.” He sucks. 

Sherlock groans.

“I suggest we revert to the original plan—the noun of it. I am going to sleep.” John isn’t so enthused. He can’t articulate it properly, not with his lips, tongue the way they are. His mind is elsewhere, too: sunspot thoughts about the soft blonde fuzz along cartilage; he'll go there someday. 

Sherlock is gasping, wheezes out something between it, something like “please.”

That’s what does it. John sighs. He’s too tired for much else. 

“All right, fine,” he grunts. “We’ll discuss… things tomorrow.” Sherlock’s right (of course he’s right); John is lead, feels like it, that’s the proof, head full and heavy with it: pb and poetry. Hasn’t even considered what they’d be getting themselves into. 

“Today,” Sherlock corrects.  

“Good morning, then.”

And John wonders if it isn’t Sherlock who’s the poet between them before slowly but surely taking his hand in his own and falling asleep.

 

+

 

John does not wake during the night, nor does he dream.

In the morning, Sherlock is gone. He leaves hot landmines, his spot still sweat-curled into the bed sheets. John showers. He thinks about touching himself, but he doesn’t. This time he shaves. He does a poor job on the right side, where the skin’s still pillow-puckered and pink. He changes, too. He doesn’t wear red. 

Sherlock’s on the couch again, reading another academic journal—maybe not, John doesn’t see, doesn’t look, has toast again—and there’s a pan of fingernails crackling on the kitchen stove. The pan handle is too far out and could easily be knocked over. John will have to move it (he doesn’t do this, either).  

Here it goes, then. 

Like a scientist, John takes data, lists out the corresponding facts in a chronological order, and from these facts he makes theories. He hypothesizes into a bite of margarine (silently, to himself, away from criticism or judgment, grey eyes, or the possibility of _wrong_ ). There it is again, the night, their necks (John looks at Sherlock’s now, impossibly thick), and elements, or what might count to some people—the wrong people—as confessions. Because they weren’t that—couldn’t be that: they were _more_ than that; John just isn’t sure what.

He frowns. Who are these “people” supposed to be anyways? Because they keep coming up. John doesn’t know. And, he discovers, he doesn’t particularly care. Sod them. All of them. 

John never cared for ordinary anyways.

It starts the way you’re supposed to, and maybe that’s the mistake.

“Sherlock,” he says, “about last night…” 

“Deleted it.”

John’s coffee cup makes a dull thud against the countertop. “What?” Because it might not have made a difference if he’d asked another way. John won’t be able to prove it; there isn’t a control group for this sort of thing. There’s only one Sherlock. It’s not an experiment you can repeat twice. 

“Hmm?” Sherlock manages. “I deleted it. I’m afraid if there’s something you need to discuss with me, I can’t be of much use to you. I couldn’t have been very important, in any case.”

Couldn’t have been… The bastard’s reading a newspaper, John sees now. He doesn’t even glance up from it. And he’s saying such horrible things, horrible things that—God, John hadn’t even thought of them, that he could have… and John’s always prepared for the worst. 

That selfish—

_“Why?”_

John likes taking precautions in a war zone, preparing for the worst: grenades, trenches. But he didn’t consider the ally turning against him with a nuclear bomb, jellied gasoline through a vacuum tube. 

Sherlock’s an explosion. 

“My mind was clouded with facts and details from books I’d already read,” he says. “And other unnecessary sentiments about an unsatisfactory dinner—not completely gone then, can’t tell you what it was, however—so I deleted it.” Sherlock folds his legs. “I’ve told you before, John, my mind is my hard drive: anything that inhibits its ability to function at its maximum capacity is therefore removed and, as I said, deleted.”

“You…” 

Sherlock cocks a brow, clearly irritated. 

“If I’ve offended you—”

“Do you mean now, or yesterday?”

“Yesterday. It’s obvious that you’re annoyed with me now—pointedly so, although I can’t reason why my comment merits such a response.”

John is an idiot. He should have known. The two of them are Hiroshima, now, the aftermath to it: its radiation, its cancer and continuing deformities.

He can’t believe he almost went gay for the sod—considered it, however briefly. Right, like John can love him as a man when he’s tending to a child.

_Right._

Joanna was right. They’re tumbling out poetry. Doesn’t time properly with the present, with rage. It’s action. There is no room for thought in action. So John doesn’t think: _“Why”_ or _“This isn’t right”_ or 

 _“What did it mean then, Sherlock? Because you never explained why you were in my room, or why you had to sleep there with me, and what exactly you were fulfilling with your_ indulging _—and you won’t tell me now, and you deleted it—everything? All of it?_

_Will you delete me, too? If I die? Or will you do it before, earlier, when it’s easier, when our friendship, this, whatever you made it last night doesn’t agree with you, or I get too boring? (God, I’m already so boring, Sherlock; you’re the smart one, the interesting one, the terrible one, I’m not terribly sure). I’ve always been boring. I’m John Watson. I’m a doctor. I’m lead. What does that mean, Sherlock? I’m poison. I’m killing you. You love murders, hate murderers. Where do I fit in? I’m not quite either. I’m not either. What am I then? Am I the space between the two?_

_Do you delete      spaces?_

_  
  
You deleted space once. The earth revolves around the sun, youknow? I desperately want to kiss you, youknow? Youknoweverything. You’ve forgottenthis,though.I won’tforget itIcan’t, please…”_ Then just hisname, _“Sherlock”_ and again, _“Sherlock”_ ,which is all John Watson thinks about anyways, all the time. Never mind. 

Instead, there are facts, and only the appropriate punctuation and description. The language is literal in interpretation and without unnecessary embellishment. 

“Nah, _nah, Sherlock,_ you’re wrong,” John says. He’s stopped eating his breakfast and left it on the table. John takes two steps closer to the door. “I’m not bothered! It’s too early for that. I’m going to have a good day! Yesterday was fine, too. I went on a date! She was a lovely girl, really, _really_ lovely.”

“I’m glad,” Sherlock says, neutral. 

“It’s in the stars for us, she says,” John continues, “and so does Mistress Constella. I’m going to go give her a call.” 

“Sounds riveting,” he says, but Sherlock’s eyes widen sarcastically. He isn’t reading the newspaper anymore.

“In fact, I’m going to do that now! Go and grab my coat, head over there now.”

“John—”

“She said I could come over any time— _any time._ ”

“Your timing is wrong.” But John isn’t listening, and Sherlock is unwilling (or too afraid) to elaborate. 

“I like that in a person, when they’re clear about what they want—she wants,” John finishes and grabs his coat. His face is pink. He can’t blame the shirt this time.

Sherlock folds his paper with the cover page in. “Clear—transparent is more like it. _People:_ you see right through them; they’re easy enough to identify and categorize by what they touch,” he says. “It’s better not to be touched, then,” Sherlock concludes.

But this isn’t poetry anymore, remember?  

John doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t feel anything either. He slams the door behind him when he leaves.

Like scientists, both of them quantify the exchange. Each measures how long it will take until the other can forgive them (Sherlock: two weeks, one if there’s a murder, two months if he tries for John’s bed again; John: never)—but Sherlock’s right when a 10-year-old Johnny Featherstone shows up dead. It was his aunt; she used a nail file; John fires a gun. In seven days, John boxes up a Chinese dinner and resumes making tea.  Sherlock drinks it. Two days after that, there's something about a pig; a man named Henry Knight comes in complaining about some hound, and they’ve all but returned to their rabid domesticity. 

But, like artists, they cannot tell the other what any of it means. 

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at Sherlock fanfiction--so feedback is definitely welcome. Hopefully I didn't muddle up any characterization or facts, at least not severely. 
> 
> Love to non-user friends who helped me beta this mother, and who so constantly and consistently bear my poetic rambles and intense John Watson feelings. 
> 
> And love to the fandom in general.


End file.
